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Searching: getElement*, querySelector*

DOM navigation properties are great when elements are close to each other. What if they are not? How to get an arbitrary element of the page?

There are additional searching methods for that.

document.getElementById or just id

If an element has the id attribute, we can get the element using the method document.getElementById(id) , no matter where it is.

Also, there’s a global variable named by id that references the element:

…That’s unless we declare a JavaScript variable with the same name, then it takes precedence:

This behavior is described in the specification, but it is supported mainly for compatibility.

The browser tries to help us by mixing namespaces of JS and DOM. That’s fine for simple scripts, inlined into HTML, but generally isn’t a good thing. There may be naming conflicts. Also, when one reads JS code and doesn’t have HTML in view, it’s not obvious where the variable comes from.

Here in the tutorial we use id to directly reference an element for brevity, when it’s obvious where the element comes from.

In real life document.getElementById is the preferred method.

The id must be unique. There can be only one element in the document with the given id .

If there are multiple elements with the same id , then the behavior of methods that use it is unpredictable, e.g. document.getElementById may return any of such elements at random. So please stick to the rule and keep id unique.

The method getElementById can be called only on document object. It looks for the given id in the whole document.

querySelectorAll

By far, the most versatile method, elem.querySelectorAll(css) returns all elements inside elem matching the given CSS selector.

This method is indeed powerful, because any CSS selector can be used.

Pseudo-classes in the CSS selector like :hover and :active are also supported. For instance, document.querySelectorAll(‘:hover’) will return the collection with elements that the pointer is over now (in nesting order: from the outermost to the most nested one).

querySelector

The call to elem.querySelector(css) returns the first element for the given CSS selector.

In other words, the result is the same as elem.querySelectorAll(css)[0] , but the latter is looking for all elements and picking one, while elem.querySelector just looks for one. So it’s faster and also shorter to write.

matches

Previous methods were searching the DOM.

The elem.matches(css) does not look for anything, it merely checks if elem matches the given CSS-selector. It returns true or false .

The method comes in handy when we are iterating over elements (like in an array or something) and trying to filter out those that interest us.

. .  

closest

Ancestors of an element are: parent, the parent of parent, its parent and so on. The ancestors together form the chain of parents from the element to the top.

The method elem.closest(css) looks for the nearest ancestor that matches the CSS-selector. The elem itself is also included in the search.

In other words, the method closest goes up from the element and checks each of parents. If it matches the selector, then the search stops, and the ancestor is returned.

getElementsBy*

There are also other methods to look for nodes by a tag, class, etc.

Today, they are mostly history, as querySelector is more powerful and shorter to write.

So here we cover them mainly for completeness, while you can still find them in the old scripts.

• elem.getElementsByTagName(tag) looks for elements with the given tag and returns the collection of them. The tag parameter can also be a star «*» for “any tags”.
• elem.getElementsByClassName(className) returns elements that have the given CSS class.
• document.getElementsByName(name) returns elements with the given name attribute, document-wide. Very rarely used.

// get all divs in the document let divs = document.getElementsByTagName('div');

Let’s find all input tags inside the table:

 
Your age:
 
  less than 18  from 18 to 50  more than 60 
 
 
 let inputs = table.getElementsByTagName('input'); for (let input of inputs) 

Novice developers sometimes forget the letter «s» . That is, they try to call getElementByTagName instead of getElementsByTagName .

The «s» letter is absent in getElementById , because it returns a single element. But getElementsByTagName returns a collection of elements, so there’s «s» inside.

Another widespread novice mistake is to write:

// doesn't work document.getElementsByTagName('input').value = 5;

That won’t work, because it takes a collection of inputs and assigns the value to it rather than to elements inside it.

We should either iterate over the collection or get an element by its index, and then assign, like this:

// should work (if there's an input) document.getElementsByTagName('input')[0].value = 5;

Looking for .article elements:

 
Long article
 
  

Live collections

All methods «getElementsBy*» return a live collection. Such collections always reflect the current state of the document and “auto-update” when it changes.

In the example below, there are two scripts.

1. The first one creates a reference to the collection of . As of now, its length is 1 .
2. The second scripts runs after the browser meets one more , so its length is 2 .

First div
  
Second div
  

In contrast, querySelectorAll returns a static collection. It’s like a fixed array of elements.

If we use it instead, then both scripts output 1 :

First div
  
Second div
  

Now we can easily see the difference. The static collection did not increase after the appearance of a new div in the document.

Summary

There are 6 main methods to search for nodes in DOM:

Method	Searches by.	Can call on an element?	Live?
querySelector	CSS-selector	✔	—
querySelectorAll	CSS-selector	✔	—
getElementById	id	—	—
getElementsByName	name	—	✔
getElementsByTagName	tag or ‘*’	✔	✔
getElementsByClassName	class	✔	✔

By far the most used are querySelector and querySelectorAll , but getElement(s)By* can be sporadically helpful or found in the old scripts.

• There is elem.matches(css) to check if elem matches the given CSS selector.
• There is elem.closest(css) to look for the nearest ancestor that matches the given CSS-selector. The elem itself is also checked.

And let’s mention one more method here to check for the child-parent relationship, as it’s sometimes useful:

• elemA.contains(elemB) returns true if elemB is inside elemA (a descendant of elemA ) or when elemA==elemB .

Tasks

Search for elements

Here’s the document with the table and form.

1. The table with id=»age-table» .
2. All label elements inside that table (there should be 3 of them).
3. The first td in that table (with the word “Age”).
4. The form with name=»search» .
5. The first input in that form.
6. The last input in that form.

Open the page table.html in a separate window and make use of browser tools for that.

There are many ways to do it.

// 1. The table with `id="age-table"`. let table = document.getElementById('age-table') // 2. All label elements inside that table table.getElementsByTagName('label') // or document.querySelectorAll('#age-table label') // 3. The first td in that table (with the word "Age") table.rows[0].cells[0] // or table.getElementsByTagName('td')[0] // or table.querySelector('td') // 4. The form with the name "search" // assuming there's only one element with name="search" in the document let form = document.getElementsByName('search')[0] // or, form specifically document.querySelector('form[name="search"]') // 5. The first input in that form. form.getElementsByTagName('input')[0] // or form.querySelector('input') // 6. The last input in that form let inputs = form.querySelectorAll('input') // find all inputs inputs[inputs.length-1] // take the last one

Comments

• If you have suggestions what to improve — please submit a GitHub issue or a pull request instead of commenting.
• If you can’t understand something in the article – please elaborate.
• To insert few words of code, use the tag, for several lines – wrap them in tag, for more than 10 lines – use a sandbox (plnkr, jsbin, codepen…)

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Document: querySelector() method

The Document method querySelector() returns the first Element within the document that matches the specified selector, or group of selectors. If no matches are found, null is returned.

Note: The matching is done using depth-first pre-order traversal of the document’s nodes starting with the first element in the document’s markup and iterating through sequential nodes by order of the number of child nodes.

Syntax

Parameters

A string containing one or more selectors to match. This string must be a valid CSS selector string; if it isn’t, a SyntaxError exception is thrown. See Locating DOM elements using selectors for more about selectors and how to manage them.

Note: Characters that are not part of standard CSS syntax must be escaped using a backslash character. Since JavaScript also uses backslash escaping, be especially careful when writing string literals using these characters. See Escaping special characters for more information.

Return value

An Element object representing the first element in the document that matches the specified set of CSS selectors, or null is returned if there are no matches.

If you need a list of all elements matching the specified selectors, you should use querySelectorAll() instead.

Exceptions

Thrown if the syntax of the specified selectors is invalid.

Usage notes

If the specified selector matches an ID that is incorrectly used more than once in the document, the first element with that ID is returned.

CSS pseudo-elements will never return any elements, as specified in the Selectors API.

Escaping special characters

To match against an ID or selectors that do not follow standard CSS syntax (by using a colon or space inappropriately, for example), you must escape the character with a backslash (» \ «). As the backslash is also an escape character in JavaScript, if you are entering a literal string, you must escape it twice (once for the JavaScript string, and another time for querySelector() ):

div id="foo\bar">div> div id="foo:bar">div> script> console.log("#foo\bar"); // "#fooar" (\b is the backspace control character) document.querySelector("#foo\bar"); // Does not match anything console.log("#foo\\bar"); // "#foo\bar" console.log("#foo\\\\bar"); // "#foo\\bar" document.querySelector("#foo\\\\bar"); // Match the first div document.querySelector("#foo:bar"); // Does not match anything document.querySelector("#foo\\:bar"); // Match the second div script> 

Examples

Finding the first element matching a class

In this example, the first element in the document with the class » myclass » is returned:

const el = document.querySelector(".myclass"); 

Complex selectors

const el = document.querySelector("div.user-panel.main input[name='login']"); 

Negation

As all CSS selector strings are valid, you can also negate selectors:

const el = document.querySelector( "div.user-panel:not(.main) input[name='login']", ); 

This will select an input with a parent div with the user-panel class but not the main class.

Specifications

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also

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This page was last modified on Jul 17, 2023 by MDN contributors.

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